The Friday Canon: PULP

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

No, I can't believe we haven't done them yet either. With just 12 UK Top 40 hits, you get FOUR ticks below. However because I'm feeling generous, for one! canon! only! you are allowed an EXTRA text-box vote for a song that's missing - if a song gets enough votes it will be included in the canon proper.

[Poll #1070087]
Duran Duran: (link)
1. Rio
2. Hungry Like The Wolf
=3. Girls On Film
=3. The Reflex
5. Save A Prayer
6. Wild Boys
7. Planet Earth
=8. A View To A Kill
=8. Is There Something I Should Know
=8. Ordinary World

Carter USM/Wonder Stuff/Pop Will Eat Itself: (link)
1. Carter USM - The Only Living Boy In New Cross
2. Carter USM - Sheriff Fatman
3. Pop Will Eat Itself - Can U Dig It
4. Carter USM - After The Watershed
5. Pop Will Eat Itself - Ich Bin Ein Auslander
6. Pop Will Eat Itself - Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!
7. Wonder Stuff - The Size Of A Cow
=8. Wonder Stuff [w/ Vic Reeves] - Dizzy
=8. Carter USM - Rubbish
=8. Wonder Stuff - Don't Let Me Down Gently

Comments

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Myself, Lex and katstevens are the only voters not to have ticked either 'Common People' or 'Do You Remember The First Time?'

Conclusion: We have better taste in Pulp songs than the rest of you.

My votes were for
Mis-Shapes / Sorted For E's & Wizz (which I still have at home, and which came with an inner sleeve to cut out your own Barbie-esque Pulp costumes.
This Is Hardcore - dark, deeply disturbing, totally brilliant
Help The Aged - I just loved the way this song built up
A Little Soul - just lovely lyrics, great tune

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

A Little Soul wd have been my 5th pick - love the handclaps!

I don't think I can remember such a huge sense of disappointment (among contemporaries) when "Help The Aged"...I want to say 'leaked' but things didn't leak then. When they heard Help The Aged. I don't think it's a bad record but it's not one of their classics.

My Four, and why

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Do You Remember The First Time - this was sort of marginal, it just reminds me of being into them at University and everyone being 20 and vibing off the same stuff :(

Sisters EP - last hurrah for the old claustrophobic voyeur Pulp, and has the amazing "I only went with her cos she looks like you MAHGOD" bit.

This Is Hardcore - old claustrophobic voyeur Pulp rises from grave as horrifying cokehead zombie. Extremely nasty.

Sunrise/The Trees - PROGTASTIC. Entirely for redemptive powers of "Sunrise".

If I was picking my favourite four Pulp singles, as opposed to top 40 hits, only TIH would make it - others wd be Razzmatazz, My Legendary GF, and either Countdown or Lipgloss.

What exactly are you gonna do for an encore?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

This Is Hardcore - old claustrophobic voyeur Pulp rises from grave as horrifying cokehead zombie. Extremely nasty.

Possibly the best thing they ever did.

Re: What exactly are you gonna do for an encore?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Agreed. It transports me instantly to sitting in on the windowsill of my room in halls in my fresher's term, 2 in the morning, chain smoking out of the window so as not to set the fire alarm off and feeling absolutely and truly miserable. I've cheered up quite a lot since then.

That goes in there

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

The most miserable song since The Smiths? Discuss!

Re: That goes in there

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think Radiohead would have contenders.

This Is Hardcore isn't miserable, anyway.

Re: That goes in there

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

And nor are the Smiths!! (Well OK they are sometimes)

Re: My Four, and why

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, my fifth song from the above list would have been 'Babies' which is a better version of 'Do You Remember The First Time' IMHO, but if we're not restricted to the chart-eligible singles, 'F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.' off of 'Different Class' is a quality tune.

It's odd, I've never thought of myself as a massive Pulp fan, and yet I can reel off pretty much four albums' worth of material, and there's very little there that I dislike. There's plenty I'm indifferent to though, perhaps that's why I never figured myself to be a big Pulp fan!

[martinv.livejournal.com]

I hate being populist in my tastes but surely Common People, one of the all time great pop singles, is a reasonable choice here?!

As much as almost every other overplayed indie track angers me (very deeply) when played at an indie club, I will always find time for Common People. It never ever gets boring. Disco 2000 on the other hand....

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I like it more than one of my picks, to be fair, but I have got bored of it (and I felt it probably wouldn't need the votes, as apparently did several other people!)

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

I like it, but it's been so overplayed I never need to hear it again.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I never liked it that much to begin with. Pulp have always left me kind of ambivalent. Not annoying, not amazing. I think it's because I don't identify with song lyrics very well (as discussed over on koganbot's Ashlee Simpson posts) and the music needs to be brilliant to win me over. Hence my liking of echoey dismal epic This Is Hardcore, where Jarvis's words kind of get lost in random bibbling.

[martinv.livejournal.com]

I've never been that about the lyrics, either to Common People or, to be honest, to most other Pulp songs. Surely CP is more about the repeated build-ups, the way the music just keeps reaching peaks you can't see how it's going to surpass, and then surpasses them?

This is Hardcore does a similar thing, but is a bit more subtle.

My favourite Pulp single, Sunrise, has just the one 'climax', to my mind, but is possibly the best one ever.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also I think because the band had been together so long they had worked out exactly how to pace their music to use Jarvis to best effect (physically and vocally) - so more than most groups it feels like the singer is orchestrating the peaks and surges on CP (he was the indie James Brown!). Jarvis scores on the "clever lyrics" but also on the "voice is an instrument" whereas most indie bands settle for one or another.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

My botherdness towards CP is something I can't quite put my finger on. It has good hooks, good instrumentation, daft video, good vocal performance from Jarv. There's just something missing, that ingredient X that I (personally) need for the song to be a 100x on repeat (e.g. the new Girls Aloud song has this X, but Sexy! No No No didn't, even though it had all the other ingredients that usually make me go potty with excitement). It's not Pulp's fault, I can see why billions of other people love the song to bits. But it's not for me.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

I really went off CP for ages but it was over-play, simple as that, and the fact that people who've never really heard anything else from Pulp except maybe Disco 2000 use it to form their entire opinion of the band. But neither of those things are the song's fault. I also have good memories of Joe Swarbrick doing a spot on karaoke of CP when we were about 18, ah halcyon days, nostalgia etc.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

'This Is Hardcore' is one of the best things they ever did, I only wish they'd gone on in that vein, but maybe JC felt that that song had already said it all!

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Ha. I didn't read this before posting the above comment (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/452726.html?thread=9998198#t9998198) but yes, ambivalence is the right way of describing my relationship with Pulp too!

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Help The Aged always had the feel of almost being a novelty record to me. But then I ticked Bad Cover Version which actually is a novelty record so what do I know.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

It has a novelty video, it's not a novelty record.